Unrelated to anything important, I ask this question.

In books, why are zombies not f---ing referred to as zombies?

Or really, OMG FUCKING ZOMBIES!

They are referred to as "walkers" and "walking dead" and "hungries" and, oh good lord, when we have a name for them, why not just call them "zombies?" That's what they are, why would you not call them zombies? Zombies!

Okay, I think I can answer this somewhat. In the same vein that hackers don't like crackers (malicious hackers) to be called "hackers" in general, perhaps those who like to keep Haitian folklore separate from the whims of Hollywood directors insist they are called something other than zombies:

The term comes from Haitian folklore (Haitian French: zombi, Haitian Creole: zonbi) where a zombie is a dead body animated by magic. Modern depictions of zombies do not necessarily involve magic but invoke other methods such as a virus.
...
The English word "zombie" is first recorded in 1819, in a history of Brazil by the poet Robert Southey, in the form of "zombi".[3] The Oxford English Dictionary gives the origin of the word as West African, and compares it to the Kongo words nzambi (god) and zumbi (fetish).

Which is to say, the Wikipedia article on zombies is somewhat fascinating.

They're still zombies. Just call them zombies.

Zombie.

If the zombie apocalypse comes, I'm totally screaming, "THEY ARE F---ING ZOMBIES!"

I suspect this topic could be an entire website all its own, instead of a series of my thoughts. Since I happen to be in one of those moods (yeah, yeah, you have no idea which "those" to which I am referring, but that's beside the point), and these thoughts have been swirling around, I should get them down, lest I forget them. Which is pretty much the reason for every single one of my posts on this site, now that I pause to reflect. Anyway.

Having been away from Shopify for a month now, there are a number of things I realize that Shopify just does RIGHT, and I miss a lot of them. I can lump them under the giant umbrella of "Shopify treats its employees right," which is true as far as any company can treat its employees right and still make a profit and still stay in business and still have more than one employee. It's hard to grow a company and it's hard to sustain a company and it's hard to have any group of people all harmonious, working in one direction, and without politics (but let's not be naïve, there are politics and maneuvering at Shopify, so maybe that last one should be, "without a lot of overt politics that adversely affect everyone in the company").

Shopify treats its employees right as well as I've seen (from the inside) any company do it. Which is not to say Shopify is perfect (it's not), but it's pretty damn good.

So, how does a company do a company "right?" How does Shopify "treat its employees right?" In no particular order other than "this is the order I thought of them," the first way they do it right is,

Default to open.

When trying to decide whether or not to let someone at work know about a thing, the answer is always yes. Default to open. The finance guys talked at an all-hands to the whole company when it came to the process of having an IPO. There wasn't any "You don't need to know this." It was, "We are doing this together." The executive team let everyone know when some change was happening (mostly) within the ranks. The security guys let everyone know when there was some could-have-been disaster with some phishing attack that might have succeeded in a spectacular way, but didn't, thankfully. Shopify is getting better at documenting things, with the company wiki available for everyone to edit and question changes. The guru leads talk about mental health in a way that opens the door for anyone to come talk if they were having issues. Every door, as far as I could tell, was open. Default to open.

It matches up with the other well-known Shopify ideal of:

Do things. Tell people.

Which I couldn't quite understand when I started working there. I read it as, "Do things, brag to everyone about it," which is such an ego-centric, American, Silicon Valley way of looking at it.

And so wrong. In reality, it was:

Do things, tell people about this nifty cool thing you just built that will make their lives easier!

Do things, tell people about this way you made the website faster!

Do things, tell people about this new project that encourages new entrepreneurs!

It was never, "Do things, now brag," It was always "Do things, now share."

Default to open.

That default to open goes both down and up. If a project is going poorly, you let the dev-lead know so that expectations are better set, additional resources can be added to the project, or the requirements adjusted. I did not do well at this, I'm very sad to say. I did do better after I was called out on this, I'm glad to say. When I found a mistake that was potentially going to cost the company six figures, my reaction was not, "Oh shit, how do I cover my ass?" it was, "Oh shit, how far up do I need to tell people right now so that we can get this fixed, and the losses minimized?" The answer to that question is, by the way, two levels up, which is pretty shallow, actually, in an organization as large as Shopify. And the potential loss from that mistake didn't happen (thankfully, that was a really rough week), as far as I know.

Default to open, except in public, then default to close.

There are of course things that can't go beyond Shopify's walls. Those stayed in Shopify, because Shopify trusts its employees not to share when they were told not to share. Shopify treats its employees as adults.

Which is, of course, the topic of "What Shopify does right, Part 2."

A post I was writing went in a completely different direction than I intended it to go. It had something I wanted to say, but didn't work in the framework of the post. So, what I didn't put there, I am putting here instead.

One of the many shit things that exist at Twitter is the lack of communication between even managers and the people that they lead. Having a lead who holds the cards close to his chest, won't send out meeting notes, won't tell his people what is going on, complains when the people seek out the information outside of him, embarrasses his people when they do try to figure things out, and doles out just enough information for you to kinda-sorta know what to do that week, is a recipe for unhappy employees and shit products. Only when you have great employees who care can your team overcome the disaster of a crappy, political, ass-hat of a manager like that.